So this week's car is a Pontiac Vibe. The vibe looks like a station wagon, but has about as much trunk space as a can of Pringles. The car has a combination of incredibly poor and absolutely wonderful features that make driving it evoke the same emotions you might feel having an incredibly bitchy but beautiful young women hitting on you -- the benefits don't outweigh the long-term hassle. For example:

Before I even pulled out of the rental lot, I turned on the car, and I had my "door open" idiot light on. I tested each of the car's four doors, slamming them shut, before I tried closing the hatch on the rear of the car (which I had already closed when I loaded my luggage). After three attempts at absolutely slamming it back into it hitch, the door held and the light went out. Pulling out of the lot at Avis, I started driving around the lot (speed limit 5 mph). I gently passed 5 miles per hour, and the car started BEEPING at me. There was no warning light, just a beep... beep... beep. I frantically looked around, wondering what the hell the issue was, pulled over, opened and closed all the door, moved my luggage into the back seat, relocked the spare tire in place, checked the tire pressure, did a hand stand, and then recited the Gettysburg Address. The little bastard kept beeping. As I approached the security booth to leave the lot, I picked up my bag to reach my license, which was with my contract. As soon as I lifted the bag, the alarm cut off mid-beep. I put the bag back down. More beeping. The damnable car thought my laptop was a passenger, and wanted me to belt it in.

That said, the car accelerates like the Grand Am I had last week, and features a 115V socket in the dash, which I find awesome. The drivers seat is rather cramped for a person of my stature, even with the seat full back, but its not unmanagably so. The rear-view mirror, though, have this amazing tendency to realign themselves everytime I leave the car, a pheonomeon I'm sure isn't by design, but I can't readily explain.

I wish that our riding lawn mower had that sensitivity. It has a "safty feature" where if the driver gets off of the seat it will disengage the blades, since the driver is obviously going to jump under the lawn mower next or something.. Anyways, whenever you go over a bump the seat bounces so the sensor thinks that the driver is getting up and shuts down the mower. Silly manufacturers :)